Following months of speculation, Nokia has officially launched its first laptop - Booklet 3G.
Nokia_laptop
Nokia's Booklet 3G: 10in display, 3G and an HDMI port - all within an aluminium chassis
Described by Nokia’s Executive Vice President as a “natural evolution” for the formerly phone-only firm, today’s surprise …

COMMENTS

not all that much of a suprise

to be fair, a 10" laptop isnt that much of a jump from some of their smart phones and nokia has always been more of a fashion brand than other manufacturers. I know that if I wanted a netbook the Nokia one is a LOT nicer looking than some of the other ones and an aluminium netbook might take some customers away from Apple in that people buying the low end macbooks, just so they can sit in a coffeee shop surfing pron with an shiney silver laptop.

Nokia is Cinderella and it's nearly midnight

Good display, shame about the processor.

I have always felt that 1024x640 is too little for a netbook, so a HD-ready display sounds good. But why did they have to use an Atom processor, which isn't capable of playing videos at this resolution? I doubt tNokia uses the Ion chipset, as they wouldn't be able to get 12 hours of battery life, so I can only conclude that you can't play HD video on their netbook.

If Nokia had used Qualcomm's Snapdragon or Nvidia's Tegra, they could have had HD playback and long battery life and this at a lower price.

Should have been a tablet

Nokia are one of very few companies who, if they made a tablet, would have been able to compete with Apples new creation- they've got a huge worldwide network of distributors and a fantastic reputation. Like someone's said above they're a bit of a fashion brand too.

They're also not Apple, so you'll be less locked out- or less likely to knacker your laptop if you try to circumvent a lock.

Netbooks have peaked- everyone who wants one has one and as they're low-spec "do a few things adequately" devices there won't be anywhere near the constant upgrade cycle of regular computers.

wow .. another pathetic keyboard

They had me until windows

Nokia have always been good at interface and device design. I'm not sure why they'd put out a generic windows netbook at this point. They're following quite a way behind the other players when they usually lead.

@AC re tablet...

I agree with the AC who posted that this should have been a tablet.

The 810N series could have been a winner if it also included a phone. You then have a device that could not only send e-mails, surf the web and also handle decent sized spreadsheets. It didn't have to be windows based, but could have been linux based and/or supported open office.

With companies now 'webifying' their ERP and employee applications, then support for a full fledged web browser that didn't default to WAP would have been a good thing. Pair it with a blue tooth head set that had the ability to use voice activated command and show caller, id, you could carry the netbook in your bag/briefcase/whatever and still have the ability to walk around and not fumble with a large device.

Definitely an extreme machine that would have done well in the netbook space.

So lets see how this puppy evolves.

Thumbs up in that they're getting closer to getting a good idea. If only they went Android and not Windows. That's a fail, but still a thumbs up for encouragement.

BTW, were they to make this a tablet, it would have made an excellent map device. After all, they did buy Navteq and with the auto industry hurting, walking, biking, etc ... with a nice larger easier to see map? Its a no brainer.

@Ian Michael Gumby

Platform Psychosis#2

Nokia already had a near netbook with their Maemo-based N770/N780, it wouldn't have taken too much effort to port it to a full Atom-based netbook or even pushed the envelope a little further by launching a Cortex-A9 based netbook and get ahead of the crowd. They could even have made it a dual-boot Symbian / Linux offering.

Instead, they've shot themselves in the feet, head and chest by following Palm's previously near-suicidal "platform-psychotic" Windows strategy. By launching a netbook based on competitor's software on competitor's hardware they've sent a big message to their own customers to the effect that they don't believe in their own technology.

Netbooks have definately NOT peaked

I got the little Samsung NC10 when it first came out, and use it all the time. It IS however just a tad slow with BBC iPlayer running, when you try to move a window around.

With a new generation of machines coming based on ION or whatever (graphics chip to give it some oomph, more pixels, the ability to drive a larger external monitor, HDMI out to watch content on my 40" full HD telly), Netbooks will achieve a new level of usefulness.

Add that to the long battety life, and it's a no brainer for me to upgrade to a new one as soon as the Nokia (if it's ION-based), Samsung N510 or S12 (Ion-based) Lenovo comes out.

Zzzz

Meh, zero interest. When I want a netbook I'll take the original concept of an 8-9" cheap and relatively disposable thing anyday, not a premium priced 10" monster. If I was willing to pay the price of these sort of branding exercises (eg Sony) I'd just get a normal laptop.

For me personally, the 10"ers seem to sit uselessy between both laptops and netbooks, taking the advantages and disadvantages of both and swapping them to create a mongrel that fails to have any of the plus points of either. Of course that probably works the other way for others : )

Basically it looks like a very expensive means of Nokia trying to introduce Ovi to a wider market. Why not just do a deal with Dell or someone to pre-install it ? The N900 is far, far more interesting, and hopefully there'll also be a more tablet-like device that sits in between, an N8xx series update.

@Ian Michael Gumby

They're already close to release on the N900, which is exactly an N810 with a phone in it. Look it up. Given that Nokia has their own very good mobile Linux platform - Maemo, which is what's on the N810 and its predecessors - I don't know why you'd think they'd release something using Android.

RE: Big Victory for Microsoft

Nokia = handsets, lots of handsets of every make, lots of mobile tech and innovation, tiny bit of OS specialised into phones.

Sony = every electronic thing under the sun, from tellys to robots to laptops, with a spinoff combined with Ericcson to make phones a la Nokia.

Not that much competition there that I can see!!

@John 181 - the 11" 1280x768 display as currently made by Sharp sells for £200 alone! The reason the netbooks are at that ridiculous 1024 rez is as they can use existing, cheap stock of 10" displays shared with other devices. Believe me, I'm in the hunt for a 10" 1280 to fix one of my existing machines and they are not cheap!

@Jonathan Richards

Actually, you might watching TV on a Solera*(? - 15 years since I last fixed one). Badge-engineering. Surprised it's still going - when I was a service engineer, it was tricky to take out the flimsy cheap PCB without breaking it. Piss-poor construction.

So, Nokia learned from that. Nothing changes....

*Plethora of small square ventilation holes on each side? Yep, that's the kiddie.

@Adam Williams

"They're already close to release on the N900, which is exactly an N810 with a phone in it Look it up."

Yup, I did that (noknok.tv via mobile-review.com). Sadly, if what I saw is true, the N900 will be physically rather smaller than the N8xx series - less like "an N810 with a phone in it", and more akin to an N97 running Maemo.

Which would be a crying shame, because an N8xx-size device with a 5MP Carl Zeiss-packing camera and 3G, would stand a serious chance of becoming the upgrade from my venerable N95, that I've been waiting for. Just a few weeks until we find out either way...

EPOC

Almost good looking...

Without specs it's hard to say too much about this thing. I must say that I can't stand the choice of keyboards. Apple made that deal and now everyone is copying it, but it just doesn't work.

I agree that this could have been an ARM machine, and it could have been quite entertaining, but I doubt Nokia is ready to take the risk of not offering Windows. As it stands the Atom just isn't very exciting.

As for the drop in netbook demand... they're so cheap that I plan to buy a new one every 12-18 months, just nobody can seem to make one that doesn't suck. Once you rule out all the Apple-like keyboards and anything with 1024x600 resolution, there isn't a lot left.

WTF...

@ Big Bear

Err.. Play Station, possibly the biggest selling console ever now being extinguished by X Box and err Symbian the OS which Nokia has based its future mobile strategy, currently being targeted by Windows Mobile (and other smaller or less enterprise friendly players). Call me a little behind the times but in my book, that's competition.

I'll say it again, this is a big win for Microsoft, getting the likes of Nokia to promote their software shouldn't be underestimated. I may even start buying MS shares again.

@Torben Mogensen

"But why did they have to use an Atom processor, which isn't capable of playing videos at this resolution?"

Sorry, that simply isn't true, and is a claim of many people who haven't tried recent netbooks (and this includes Steve Jobs who believes such cheap netbooks are not possible to be decent).

My Samsung NC10 has an Atom processor and I'm watching 720p HD movies full screen smooth as anything. More than that I have them upscaled to 1080p via the VGA port to my 40" HD TV and still perfectly smooth.

I've been watching movies, both SD and HD full screen on the Sammy whilst on a plane with it in 'silent' mode (i.e. throttle back the CPU, low power mode etc to conserve battery), and still flawlessly smooth.

It does require the CoreAVC codec though as Microsoft's codecs just aren't up to it. The one restriction here is CoreAVC can't deal with DRM video, so BBC's HD iPlayer won't run through it (though their SD iPlayer works fine with the standard codecs).

Netbook sales?

This looks pretty good, but does anyone have any netbook sales numbers by country? Netbooks are quite popular here in the U.S., but I can't see how they will sell very many high end devices here in a new market when they are only known for selling cheap or free prepaid phones.